Four years ago, the federal government enacted the Impact Assessment Act (IAA), also known as Bill C-69. The reception was not good. In some circles, the legislation became known as the “no-more pipelines bill.” Industry associations, scholars and governments expressed their misgivings with the act and the effects it was likely to have on resource development. This month the Supreme Court of Canada confirmed the act is unconstitutional. Whoops!
The door is not shut on a better approach, however. But Ottawa and the provinces need to work together to achieve it, starting now. In the decision’s conclusion, Chief Justice Wagner wrote: “This scheme plainly overstepped the mark.” What are the key elements that federal policy-makers…
Via the Canadian Institute for Health Research, Canada was an enthusiastic participant in the Commonwealth Fund’s ambitious 18,000-person 2021 survey of seniors in 11 wealthy nations.(Germany, Australia, Switzerland, New Zealand, the U.S., Norway, Canada, the U.K., France, Sweden and Netherlands). It asked 68 questions about people’s experience with and perception of the health-care system and the health-care providers they deal with.
In our recent C.D. Howe Institute paper, we focused on the results for seniors care. We used 49 indicators from the survey to create five summary categories: access to care, care process, equity, the impact of COVID-19 on seniors and the health status of seniors. Such…
Although housing is mainly a provincial jurisdiction, the federal government is seized with the pressing political and policy problem of how to increase the housing stock, and sooner rather than later. Ottawa’s proper role in housing is to focus on areas of direct federal control like taxes and immigration. Direct intervention on city-by-city zoning decisions would be unwise and would likely only worsen the housing crisis.
The federal government has made a good start on housing by exempting rental construction from GST. But it needs to do more. Ottawa’s GST take from housing has been rising stealthily since the early 1990s because of inflation. To merely reverse the increases, it should inflation-index and nearly double…
